I write because I'm looking for a distro with handy remasterability on the USB.

I want to install octave, numpy and maxima on it, and possibly some more, and then remaster onto a USB stick which I will duplicate and give to some lucky maths students.

Has anybody remastered often with several distros? Any comments on that?

I have looked at DSL, Slax and Puppy .. those are the main contenders, although I suppose that I expect Knoppix to be the most remaster friendly ... so that's in the short-list too. I also would like the persistence too, to save files.